Hard Permadeath as a miner with no pay-it-forward, nearly died in sector 3 to a pugilist due to having 10 shield strength. Careful maneuvering saved me. I bought a strength 80 shield, but then in sector 4 a pair of relatively dangerous pirates hunted me. I fought off one and damaged the other, but my shields gave out and we were blasted.

i also started Hard PD - with no extra funds (although my pay it forward account is full with almost 28M$)

first near-death-experience with that new star temple security while auto-returning to shuttle .. then
got ambushed on my way home(that is to Sector(S) 5 gruff embassy) in S9 by several pirates.. that blasted through my observer shield and armor damaging the hull (repair cost total >50K $ while i had enough $ to refill my ships supply...
managed to get to gruff embassy all i got was a lousy t-shirt err space suit and enough $ as reward to buy that shiny new plastic armor as replacement - and not enough left to even consider repairing the remaining hull damage

on my way to looting the pirate derelicts of my former attackers - time to recoup the costs

down in a merc base (injured/underequipped/outgunned) my way out of that level was cut of by 2 mercs blocking from 2 sides and was about to die if i would push through them right now - but while running back from them i saw a hole in the wall with small lava pool blocking the entrance to a small (and at the moment more important) empty cave - and me was lucky enough to have enough oxygen to wait around 50 turns to patch up the wounds (iam thinking making a makro for resting instead killing my keyboard - or is there some hidden R50 command like in the ol'roguelikes?)